Gray Screen in Windows ME

I'm running Windows ME on an IBM Netvista.
I believe it's a 667mHz processor. Pentium 3.
192mb RAM.
20gb hard drive with about 4-5gb available.
Am having problems when starting up.
I can't even double click a folder without my screen going completely gray.
I have employed the following routine to prevent this.
- Startup
- Launch 'Disk Information' Accessory
- Go to Internet Explorer and go to a site that is NOT yahoo.
- Wait a bit.
After this routine, I can generally get around ok without gray screen taking over.
I should say that when I first launch disk information, it says i have about 72mb remaining out of the 192. This decreases rapidly upon refreshes.
All I have in Startup items are 5 basic system startups and my anti-virus software.
Have tried Search & Destroy, AdAware and others to no avail.
Any advice, besides the obvious 'get a new computer?'
Oh yeah, I defragged last night too.
This problem's been going on for about 7 months.
Thanks much.

 

Is the HDD running overtime? What amount of the processor is being used; is it constantly high?

My first thought is that you do not have enough swap (pagefile) space on your harddrive, and this is bogging down the desktop refresh.

You might also want to reseat your RAM sticks, especially if you have moved your comp around lately.

Just my $.02

 

How would I find out if HDD is running overtime?
As far as the processor, after startup it usually says something like 94% if i'm looking in the right place (under performance).
Also, how do I find out and fix the harddrive swap space?
I will try reseating the ram. Would more ram help?
Thanks again for all your help.

 

You can ususally see the HDD running (activity light) and in some cases you can hear it.

There is a file called WIN386.SWP that utilizes your hard drive as a repository when you run out of RAM. This allows (at least in theory) less accessing of the HDD. This is file is usually set and managed automatically by the OS, but can be changed manually. The file can be a couple hundred MB to a couple GB depending on your resources, however, bigger doesn't mean better.

I would check any other opinions before trying this, but if you're interested, here is an article on how to work it.

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article07-035

Other than possibly a virus/malware issue, I'm tapped out of ideas.